You’re familiar with fear in its most common form: an instantaneous reflex triggered by your reptilian brain when faced with a threatening stimulus. But the most powerful fears, the fears that shape our day-to-day behavior, take on hidden, insidious forms. Now is the time to put an end to these limiting beliefs.
Do you feel that, no matter how hard you try, it’s never good enough? Are you forever looking for (and finding) excuses to never trying anything new? Does the quality of your relationships seem to be on the slide? Do you hold back more than you used to? Are you on the defensive?
These attitudes are rooted in unconscious fears – the fear of failure, rejection, missing out and difference – and they act like a behavioral GPS, organizing your life choices, limiting your outlook and restricting your potential for development. Fed by your organizational, cultural and social environment, these fears have gained even more ground because of the health crisis. Especially because they are underestimated, it is vital to identify them and acknowledge the impact they have on your life so you can convert them into positive energy.
Based on
Fear Less: How to Win at Life Without Losing Yourself,by Dr Pippa Grange, (Vermilion, 2020).
Step 1: Identify what is (unconsciously) fostering an anxiety-provoking culture
Unlike our prehistoric ancestors, we don’t have to fight to survive. At the same time, modern-day fears aren’t a purely subjective construct. They are activated by dominant social beliefs that value performance and competition, as reflected in common sayings such as “Give it your all,” “We crushed our opponents,” etc.
Marianne graduated from HEC in 1998 and is now a freelance journalist specializing in management and higher education. What really fires her up is the human dimension and she is c taking a psychology course at Rennes 2 University.
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